Is Aussie hospitality in danger of becoming extinct? Photo: File.
You don’t always notice something’s extinct until it’s too late. Once upon a time, genuine Australian hospitality was everywhere: warm greetings, easy smiles and a sense of being looked after, even when the coffee was average.
But like an endangered species, it’s becoming harder to spot. You can still find traces if you know where to look, but mostly, it lives in memory.
Hospitality venues across the country (including Canberra) are closing their doors under pressure from rising supply costs, ongoing labour shortages, shifting customer behaviours and a cost-of-living crisis that has reshaped the way people eat out.
But alongside the economic data there’s something more worrying happening on the floor, a slow extinction of the thing that once made Australian hospitality so special: service that felt effortless and genuine.
When I first arrived in Australia in 2013, I was struck by how welcoming hospitality felt here. Even when the coffee was burnt or the eggs overcooked, service was warm, polite and genuinely friendly. A simple café visit felt like being invited into someone’s living room.
These days, I’m more likely to be greeted by someone who looks like I’ve personally inconvenienced them by walking through the door.
There are reasons for this, of course. The pressure on hospitality staff has intensified in ways that few outside the industry fully understand. The emotional toll of dealing with difficult, demanding, or even abusive customers has left many workers defensive before the first order is even taken. The pandemic didn’t just empty venues, it eroded patience. Both sides of the counter feel it.
On top of that, the make-up of the workforce has shifted. For many younger workers, hospitality is no longer a craft or a career, it’s a stopgap. And it shows.
While there are still incredible young professionals out there, the reality is that too many are stepping into customer-facing roles without the temperament or the training to handle them. Some simply shouldn’t be there, yet in a tight labour market, business owners have little choice.
But there’s a cost – one bad interaction can lose a customer. A few of them can ruin a reputation. And when enough customers feel unwelcome, the brand fades away.
To be clear, this isn’t an attack on a generation, it’s a reflection of the environment they’ve entered; one with rising pressure, limited support and emotionally demanding work that’s often dismissed as “unskilled”.
After two decades in this industry, both working in and teaching hospitality, this isn’t just nostalgia or “an old man yelling at a cloud”. It’s an omen!
If we don’t address the cultural erosion of service, we risk losing something much more valuable than foot traffic: trust.
So what do we do? Part of the solution lies with us, the customer. I know firsthand that many of today’s servers carry the emotional weight of increasingly complex, demanding guests. And when that becomes the norm, it’s easy to slip into defensiveness before the first order is even taken.
So we need to start with empathy. Be kind, even when we’re not met with kindness. Model the mood we’d like to receive.
But businesses need to act too. Owners can no longer afford to hire solely based on availability. Yes, we’re in a labour crisis, but the long-term impact of hiring disengaged or unsuitable staff is devastating. Not everyone is suited to hospitality and that’s okay. But business owners need to recognise that, at times, the wrong hire is worse than no hire at all.
Finally, we need to invest in developing emotional capability, not just technical skill. Most hospitality training focuses almost exclusively on hard skills: making coffee, pouring beer, balancing rosters etc. But hospitality is not just about what you serve, it’s how you make people feel.
Studies show that emotional intelligence in hospitality staff is directly linked to improved customer satisfaction, team cohesion and long-term retention. This is teachable. And it’s overdue.
This recent decline in hospitality culture isn’t just a coincidence, it’s the result of a system stretched thin, workers left unsupported and customers forgetting they’re part of the equation too.
But it’s not irreversible. Australian hospitality isn’t dead, but it is endangered. And it’s on all of us – guests, owners, educators and workers – to make sure we don’t let it become extinct.
Bernardo Mateus has more than 15 years in the hospitality industry and teaches courses on hospitality leadership, event management and guest service management at the Canberra Institute of Technology.
